High School Science Fair Project With Photography

I am in 10th grade and would like to do a science fair project on photography.
Last year I developed B and W film in coffee and another substance vs. the actual developer.
This year I would like to either expand on this or start off with a new topic but still in the photography category.
This project would be going to the science congress and would have to be detailed and at a high level.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

Other topics could be sensors, types and properties. Look at the tutorials here: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/
If that interests you, you might find a lot more detailed information. A high level project would involve an experiment, not just a display of information already known. BW is chemical oriented, rather archaic technology. Senosors are electronics and involves the physics of light. All pixels are not the same. Both require some equipment. Hope this helps.

You could file a report your findings with the various exposures/f stop/times of exposure on the enlarger/various heights
and noted/contrast/development times you achieve whilst working with your negs in the darkroom and your results relative
to contrast, exposure/zone system used.

Here are a few questions for you to ask while planning and executing the project that might help guide your efforts.
The pinhole camera is simplicity itself which makes it easier for you, the scientist, and your appreciative audience to
better understand the photographic principles and theories you illustrate in its construction.

How does an f-stop value connect the focal length of your camera to the size of the aperture opening?

Make a chart to calculate photographically useful f-stop apertures for tiny openings. (Perhaps this is an opportunity
for you to learn more about Microsoft Excel.) How does this help you figure out proper exposure times?

What is reciprocity failure? Did you make exposure adjustments because of this? What were they?

Study various theories on optimum pinhole size. Why are they so complicated? Which theory works the best?

Study various ways pinhole camera builders use to make apertures. Do you need to know more about putting a tiny
hole in something than which end of a drill bit is which? Is it practical to make a real pinhole the same size as the
optimum a theory yields? What difference does it make? How did you compensate for this?

Why is the resulting image upside-down and backwards?

Build your camera and present the photographs you took with it. Document the steps you needed to get it right.
Describe the ideas and tools you applied. What did you learn about photography?

To meet the "testable" requirement, one of the things you could do is use math to illustrate what you wanted to do, and
then carry that project out to see if the results fell within your mathematical predictions. If not, why not, etc. ?
If you need to beef up your project with some math, there's plenty of math related to optics and photography out there.
Whether you have simple, arithmetic-based math skills, or advanced multi-variable calculus skills, you should be able to
find math problems within the scope of your educational progress that can be used to show/test a hypothesis.

For some good diagrams, sometimes people who make introductory explanations of large format photography serve as
good hosts. http://www.largeformatphotography.info/ is a website that has some good links.

If you get into using math with photography as part of your project, it might help to have a mentor or more experienced
person help to guide you. That way, you can get the project done without straying too far off of track.

Being able to measure could help to make your project successful, for a science fair. For example, let's say you decide
to make a pinhole camera, as suggested above. But, you're a beginner. The first time you try, you might fail. You tried
to make a pinhole, but instead, you accidentally jabbed a huge, gaping hole in the thing. Your pinhole camera doesn't
work on the first try. The hole is way too big. How much too big? Record that. That's an example of building
something that's outside of the required tolerances. If nothing else, measuring and documenting the failures can show
some of the limits to the ideas.

Then keep on with the project, and try to build a pinhole again. You can do it.

So, what I'm getting at is, if you mess up a few times, don't give up. When you're exploring new stuff, it's normal to have
some setbacks. Hopefully, you're going to be a better student than I often was, and will steadily get the work done and
keep the project on schedule. That way, if you do have problems, you can document them and continue striving to meet
your goal. Keep on, keepin' on. J.

If you're in a situation like I was, the Science Fair projects will probably go like this:

At first, everyone's gonna be excited about getting the thing done. This stage will occur while the teacher is talking
about it. Then, everyone in the class is going to have a bunch of good intentions. Some of them will get books from the
library. Then, something else will come up. People around you will begin to lose focus. They're gonna start blowing off
the homework.

Some weeks will go by, and then it's almost Science Fair time. A huge panic will secretly descend on every member of
the class. At the last minute, or sometimes the weekend before, the whole class will scramble around and try to slap
something together to meet the requirements.

The teacher will be able to tell who was scrambling around. Trust me on this.

This is where you come in. Hopefully, all along you've been doing you're homework. You've been busy, too, but every
day you plugged and chugged at it a little more. Two weeks into the project you almost lost hope because the project
looked so big. But, you kept on. You did the research. You read the books. You built the test materials for the project
some time before it was due. During those last few days before the due date, you didn't have to build everything from
scratch and totally write the report from a blank page. You just needed to put on a little final cosmetic polish.

Trust me on this. I have failed a great many school subjects. I have also earned some good grades, too. Usually, I'm a
B student, but sometimes I got A's. Pretty much every time I failed, it was because I didn't do the daily work. Every
time I succeeded, it wasn't because of some monumental last-minute push. It was because I had done the homework.

Even though it's boring or lonely or hard, do that homework. Don't cheat. Don't procrastinate. Plug and chug. It will pay
off. Trust me on this. All good things I have achieved in my little, plain jane life have been because I was investing
daily in trying to point in the general direction of the goal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my own kind of
homework now. Good luck. J.